Associated Seed Growers, Inc. v. Scrogham

72 P.2d 200, 52 Wyo. 232, 1937 Wyo. LEXIS 47
CourtWyoming Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 10, 1937
Docket2048
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 72 P.2d 200 (Associated Seed Growers, Inc. v. Scrogham) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wyoming Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Associated Seed Growers, Inc. v. Scrogham, 72 P.2d 200, 52 Wyo. 232, 1937 Wyo. LEXIS 47 (Wyo. 1937).

Opinion

*236 Riner, Justice.

This cause, brought here by direct appeal, arises under the Workmen’s Compensation Law of this state. The district court of Park County made an award in favor of the respondent, Clarence Scrogham, hereinafter usually referred to as the “employee” or “claimant,” and the appellant, Associated Seed Growers, Inc., a corporation, subsequently designated herein as the “employer” or the “company,” claiming error in the court’s action in that respect, asks that the record be reviewed.

The material facts are very little in dispute and would appear to be these: Scrogham, a married man, with three children, aged one, three and five years respectively, in his family, living at Powell, Wyoming, went to work for the Company in its seed plant there the latter part of June, 1935. He testified that he had never experienced any illness since he was nine years old. In 1930 he took out a life insurance policy, carried it for several years and then dropped it. He was employed by the Company from about the middle of August, 1935, until January 8, 1936, to draw off seed beans from a hopper into sacks, then to lift and pile these sacks on a five bag truck, the top sack being placed at a height of from three and one-half to four feet. When there were scales under the hopper, which sometimes was the case, the sacks were filled to weigh *237 112 to 120 pounds; if there were no scales, the sacks would weigh on an average from 125 to 130 pounds; also some of the larger sacks would then be filled to weigh 150 pounds. He handled from 20 to 30 sacks of beans an hour. The employee worked eight hours a day on two shifts, working some weeks on one shift, some on another. One of these shifts was from 6 A. M. to 2 P. M., and the other from 2 P. M. to 10 P. M.

On December 27,1935, when Scrogham was working on the afternoon shift, which as already indicated ran until 10 o’clock at night, and just after he had eaten his evening meal, about six o’clock, what took place is thus described by the claimant’s testimony:

“I was draining off the hopper. I bent over to pick up a sack and put it five high. That was the fifth sack up. When I looked at the light bulb there was red streaks of stuff through my left eye. I told some of the boys working there I could see different objects, and they all looked red to me when I looked at the light. When I didn’t look at the light it looked like a bunch of moss wove around through my eye.”

One of his fellow workmen, as a witness, testified about hearing Scrogham make the remark about seeing objects “red,” referred to in the claimant’s testimony. On cross-examination and redirect examination claimant further said that he noticed something in front of his eye, a “cloudiness,” and seeing “red” for the first time on the date last mentioned after he stooped to lift one of the sacks and “went to straighten up.” Previous to this time the only trouble he had had with his eyes was their “watering” and a “flickering” or “twitching” sensation. Having occasion, the early part of December, 1935, to take one of his children to a licensed optometrist, on account of an inflamed eye, he had the practitioner examine claimant’s own eyes, and was then told that there was nothing wrong with them.

After the occurrence, on December 27, 1935, Scrog- *238 ham told the manager of the Seed Plant about the condition of his left eye, as he had mentioned it to his fellow workmen, and was directed by the manager to go to Billings, Montana, to consult an eye specialist in that city. The latter made an examination of both eyes of the employee on December 80, 1935, finding therefrom that Scrogham had rather an extensive recent hemorrhage on the interior of his left eye and that his vision was in that eye reduced to see from only three to five feet. The right eye was, however, at the time found to be nearly normal, the specialist testifying on the trial of this case that then in that eye “with very weak lenses he had normal vision.” After this examination the employee returned to Powell and continued his work as usual in the Company’s seed plant for about a week longer. On January 9,1936, Scrogham returned to the specialist complaining of something in his right eye. A second examination was then made and it disclosed that he had suffered a hemorrhage in that eye also. Shortly thereafter, at the direction of the employer, following the eye specialist’s suggestion, the employee returned to Billings and was subjected to a thorough physical examination by other physicians. This examniation, by an X-ray of the lungs, disclosed “an old healed tuberculosis.” Scrogham was re-examined by several eye specialists on February 10, 1936, and the condition of both his eyes was at that time found to be bad. It appears that his loss of eyesight grew progressively worse.

Medical testimony was forthcoming at the trial, given by the eye specialist and other doctors, that the walls of the blood vessels in claimant’s eyes had been weakened by the old tuberculosis without his knowledge; that the employee was totally and permanently disabled in both of his eyes so far as his sight was concerned ; that a strain would produce these hemorrhages in the eye, as also would the effect of lifting, scuffling *239 with other employees, walking hard, jarring the body through jumping from a platform, or even the excitement of becoming angry; that the strain of lifting the bean sacks in the workman’s employment would be such as would cause these hemorrhages; that if there were no strain, but there was an old tubercular condition of the lungs, showing that it had healed at some remote time, that of itself would not cause the eye hemorrhage ; that a person suffering from weakened blood vessels in the eye as a consequence of an old healed tuberculosis might safely go through life without any impairment of vision if he were very careful in all physical movements; that a person of Scrogham’s age, with normal blood vessels in his eyes, would not be affected by hard labor or the strain of lifting the bean sacks, and that the weakening of the walls of the blood vessels of the eye is an unusual development of the disease of tuberculosis. There would seem to be no definite evidence in the record regarding the time when Scrog-ham first noticed hemorrhages in his right eye.

All the medical testimony agreed that a person would notice the hemorrhage within a few seconds after it occurred, as when it first takes place “the light of any light appears red.”

Other items of testimony in the record will be mentioned as will be necessary to fully understand the questions presented and their disposition herein.

The district court found among other facts that “the hemorrhage and rupture of the blood vessels sustained by the workman Scrogham occurred while he was working for the Associated Seed Growers, Inc., in the regular course of his employment,” and concluded “that the straining in lifting of the sacks of beans, during the regular employment of the petitioner by the employer, and the bursting of the blood vessels of his eyes from the continuous straining while lifting the sacks of beans is an accident under the Wyoming Com *240

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Bluebook (online)
72 P.2d 200, 52 Wyo. 232, 1937 Wyo. LEXIS 47, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/associated-seed-growers-inc-v-scrogham-wyo-1937.